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We use well resolved numerical simulations with the lattice Boltzmann method to study Rayleigh–Bénard convection in cells with a fractal boundary in two dimensions for $Pr = 1$ and $$Ra \in \left [10^7, 10^{10}\right ]$$ , where Pr and Ra are the Prandtl and Rayleigh numbers. The fractal boundaries are functions characterized by power spectral densities $S(k)$ that decay with wavenumber, $$k$$ , as $$S(k) \sim k^{p}$$ ( $p < 0$ ). The degree of roughness is quantified by the exponent $$p$$ with $p < -3$ for smooth (differentiable) surfaces and $$-3 \le p < -1$$ for rough surfaces with Hausdorff dimension $$D_f=\frac {1}{2}(p+5)$$ . By computing the exponent $$\beta$$ using power law fits of $$Nu \sim Ra^{\beta }$$ , where $Nu$ is the Nusselt number, we find that the heat transport scaling increases with roughness through the top two decades of $$Ra \in \left [10^8, 10^{10}\right ]$$ . For $$p$$ $= -3.0$ , $-2.0$ and $-1.5$ we find $$\beta = 0.288 \pm 0.005, 0.329 \pm 0.006$$ and $$0.352 \pm 0.011$$ , respectively. We also find that the Reynolds number, $Re$ , scales as $$Re \sim Ra^{\xi }$$ , where $$\xi \approx 0.57$$ over $$Ra \in \left [10^7, 10^{10}\right ]$$ , for all $$p$$ used in the study. For a given value of $$p$$ , the averaged $Nu$ and $Re$ are insensitive to the specific realization of the roughness.